SCHOOL'S LEGO MAN ROCKETS INTO SPACE

FOOTAGE shows a Lego man on a weather balloon being sent into space and crashing back down to Earth - for a unique school project.

- LAUREN BEAVIS News Reporter

Staff and pupils at Gobowen Primary School in Shropshire sent up the weather balloon - with passenger Dan the Lego man attached alongside a small camera - into the atmosphere.

It went up on June 18 to measure temperature, wind, relative humidity, and pressure.

The video, which shows the Lego man’s epic adventure up into space - and back down to earth - is over 13 minutes long and accompanied by dramatic music.

Despite the team losing contact with the balloon on the day they sent it up, they were delighted to see the tracker coming back online the following day - which revealed how it had landed in a quarry in Newark, Nottinghamshire.

The school team said the balloon reached a staggering minus 54 degrees Celsius - which suggested it went “well over 30,000 feet - maybe reaching in the region of 70,000 feet”.

The balloon, and Dan, have since been retrieved, and Margaret Cameron, a Year Four teacher at the school, explained how the project - which finally paid off after two years of planning, came to fruition.

She said: “Two years ago, a child in my Year Four class asked if we could launch a weather balloon into the stratosphere, as he has seen some videos on the internet as was fascinated by it.